Burke

Life

• Early life
  • Edmund Burke is born in Dublin in 1729 when it was part of the British Empire
  • Father was a prosperous attorney
  • His father was protestant, mother was catholic
  • Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, bastion of the Anglican Church
  • He went to the Middle Temple at London to qualify for the bar
  • He married in 1756 and had a son 1758, disqualifying him from celibate expectations
• Career
  • Felt a political career and became a writer
  • He was a writer and then a public figure
  • It was impossible to pursue a career in philosophy without independent income or clerical vocation
  • He made money in narrative works and political affairs
  • 1758 until 1765, he was the conductor of the new Annual Register
  • 1765: Becomes a private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham and elected into the House of Commons
  • He in that service remained there for 29 years
  • Had many parliamentary speeches and published versions of them
  • His career embraced concerns about British rule overseas and his work was linked to crituque of the French Rev
  • More notable as a pundit, holding office only twice for a brief period
  • In may 1791, there was a break in his party colleagues over the significance of the rev, he became an independent commentator on domestic politics and international affairs
  • He turns his attention to Ireland in his last years, were he failed to found a political dynasty and left no lasting school
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Philosophy

• Was he a political philosopher?
  • He wrote no theoretical work, he was more a politician
  • He wrote about the French and American Revolutions
  • He published his speeches
  • A successful pamphleteer

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French Revolution

• His work is characterized by his views on the French Revolution
  • He took a critical position and was latter associated with conservatism
  • The event became a way for people to orient themselves politically
  • He associated the revolution with retrogression, not progress, contrary to modern views
  • French revolution is viewed with the perspective of modern liberal progress, but Burke does not live to see the longer future
• Views of the time
  • Supported by the English because it was against absolute monarchy
  • They had their own revolution 100 years earlier
  • People did not agree with Burke until later, the events of the Second Revolution and Reign of Terror
• His view
  • He saw the revolution lacked the necessities for a parliamentary government:
  • Intermediate ranks in society, which they abolished
  • System of property: also undermined
  • Foundation for authority: also not present
  • The revolution did not have the components prerequisite for what it wanted to establish
  • It wanted to create a new man and new society
  • He did not believe you could write rights into existence
  • Perceived this doctrine was based on reason, enlightenment ideas: it was too abstract to be a design for society
  • The revolution was self-destroying, it was a delusive vision
  • Mankind is civil and social, a product of his heritage and society that a Revolution could not change
  • Man is a product of nature and society
  • There is a natural order is society based on the past
  • It was a social experiment that he saw would fail
  • The ambitions of the French
  • Reconstruct a new calendar: base 10 system
    • Ten months, 30 days in a month, 10 days in a week
  • Base 10 system of time
  • 1790: he makes his stance, defending:
  • Liberty, which has conditions for its security
  • Right of resistance against illegitimate government under extreme conditions
  • He felt that important values were lost in Europe
  • Duty and honor to authority
  • Loyalty to rank and sex
  • Dignified obedience
  • King will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle
  • Revolutions should be like the Glorious Rev, it should restore the rule of the law and the balance of power
• Gradual evolution over revolution
  • Not a conservative in the sense of preservation and no change, but gradual change
  • Revolutions usually have unintended outcomes contrary to its aims

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• Authority
  • He defends a notion of authority
  • Authority is legitimate if supported by popular consent
  • It is entrenched by tradition
  • Conditional tradition
  • It is not tradition at all costs
  • tradition protects rights but the later are more important, tradition is conditional
  • Not the typical conservative defense of tradition regardless
  • All ideologies have elements to conserve
  • It saves the valued principles, even the most radical
  • Conservatism is a variable, not a stable concept
  • Burke predates his own ideology, conservatism does not exist but is a belated projection onto the period
• Societies
  • Occur naturally
  • Classes are natural, natural order is divine, God picks who will lead (believed in aristocracy)
  • Ordinary people only have a desire for self-interests
  • Critical of the notion of equality, it is fictional because people are not equal
  • Critical of natural rights and the general will
  • Valued patriotism: interests of the nation are prioritized over the interests of the individual
  • Believed in an European society, a body with common traditions, cultures, and values
• Contract
  • Believed society was a contract but the state is more than a partnership or agreement
  • State should be revered because it is a partnership of science, art, and every virtue and in all perfection
  • A partnership between those that are dead and those yet to be born too
• Liberty
  • Constitutional monarchy, rule of law, and legal precedent was better for liberty than new established abstract rights
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The politician

• The role of the politician
  • Delegated the responsibility to make choices for the best interest of those represented
  • Not responsible for following what the people want per say
  • They are supposed to be logical enough to make the best decisions

• Conscious vote

  • Gave a speech in 1774 to his constituents against slavery, presents the concept of the concious vote
  • Representatives should remain free and independent
  • There is the delegate vs trustee model of representation, he believed in the later

• Positions

  • Changed over his career
  • He was a believed in a monarchy governed by law
  • Valued inherited wisdom of tradition and man’s concept be moderate, balanced and compromising instead of trying to overthrow the order
  • Though a critic of the French revolution, he supported the movement for Irish independence and the American Revolution
  • Peace and reconciliation with American colonies, repeal the Tea Tax
  • Opposed East India CO

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Impact

Conservativism

• Considered the father of conservativism
  • Humans have a tendency to act irrationally, and must be kept in check by tradition, morality, law
  • Humans have a proclivity towards evil and fascinated by disaster, the instinct of self preservation
• Conservative policies:
  • Protectionism in trade
  • Less state intervention in the economy
  • Patriotism, nationalism
  • Culture of traditional values
  • Law and order
  • State as a tool against degeneracy